Any Chance of a Game?
A Season at the Ugly End of Park Football
Barney Ronay(Author)
Ebury Press
Published on 4. August 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-0-09-190028-1 (ISBN)
Description
'I played at primary and secondary school: in corridors, on the playing fields, at the bus stop on the way home; at university (three times a week); and then after that in pub teams, indoor leagues, park pitch free-for-alls, on beaches and lawns, in airport departure lounges and motorway service stations. From schoolboy promise to the beginnings of athletic decay, football - the basic pleasure of kicking a ball, the attachments of teams, friendships, and moments of pointless but irreducible triumph - just refuses to go away.' "Any Chance of a Game?" is the story of a season playing for a Sunday league football team and a personal journey to discover why Barney, and men like him everywhere, need to play football and just what they take from it and its attendant culture. Each chapter follows a successive key match during the season and then uses it to go on a thematic mazy dribble - childhood, friendships, memory, violence, love, women, winning, class, nationality and being a man. This is an amusing tale that will ring true with anyone who's ever kicked a ball in muddied anger.
It's about embrocation, showering together, half-time oranges, half-time punch-ups, existential angst and wanting to run forever on wet grass.
It's about embrocation, showering together, half-time oranges, half-time punch-ups, existential angst and wanting to run forever on wet grass.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Ebury Publishing
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 136 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
350 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-09-190028-1 (9780091900281)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Barney Ronay is 30 and lives in London. He writes for When Saturday Comes and compiles the Clogger pages in the Guardian sports section. He is co-author of the forthcoming WSC Companion to Football (Penguin) and creator of the mildly successful satirical sporting website The Pitch. He plays left midfield.